Stephen of England

Stephen of England (1096-25 October 1154) was the King of England from 22 December 1135 to 25 October 1154, succeeding Henry I of England and preceding Henry II of England. He was the nephew of Henry, and in 1135 he crossed the English Channel from his domains in Normandy to take the throne of England after Henry I's death. During Stephen's tenure, England devolved into "The Anarchy", during which Henry I's son Henry Plantagenet vied for control of England with the help of Stephen's brother Robert of Gloucester. In the 1141 Battle of Lincoln he was defeated and captured, but Robert was captured soon after at the Rout of Winchester. In the summer of 1153, Stephen and Henry agreed to the Treaty of Wallingford, which designated Henry and the House of Anjou as the successors of Stephen.

Count of Blois
Stephen was born in 1096, the son of Count Etienne of Blois and Baroness Adele of Beaumont. His father was from the House of Blois, ruling the County of Blois in Normandy; his mother came from the House of Normandy, a more powerful dynasty that ruled the Kingdom of England and the Duchy of Normandy. Through his mother, he was the grandson of William the Conqueror and therefore the nephew of Henry I of England. He was the brother of Count Guillaume of Blois, Thibault II of Champagne, and Count Henri of Winchester. Stephen was liked by his uncle King Henry, who allied with him due to being his nephew as well as due to the negligible possibility of him becoming an enemy of his. Stephen married Countess Mathilde of Boulogne, the daughter and only heiress of Count Eustache III of Boulogne.

In 1120, Stephen planned to head to England on board the White Ship along with 300 other passengers, including Prince William Adelin, the heir apparent to England. However, he suffered from diarrhea and was concerned about overcrowding, so he stayed behind. The ship sunk in a disaster that left all but two dead, and William drowned. This caused a dispute over primogeniture succession, as there were no other male heirs to the king. However, a common pattern of seizing the throne had been in place since 1066: William the Conqueror seized control of England from Harold Godwinson in 1066, William II of England fought Robert of Normandy over the succession, and Henry I had to seize Normandy by force. Only Henry's daughter Matilda could be an heir, but as she was a woman, this was unlikely. In 1125 she lost the title of Empress of the Holy Roman Empire after the death of Henry V of Germany, and in 1128 she remarried to Count Geoffrey V of Anjou, a member of the House of Anjou; the Normans and Angevins were mortal enemies. In 1135, Matilda and her new husband rebelled in Normandy against their father King Henry after he refused to grant them control of the duchy, and Henry fell ill and died.

Succession to England
Following the death of Henry, most of the Anglo-Norman nobility of England believed that Stephen would be the best candidate to succeed him. He was extremely wealthy and well-mannered, while he also casually laughed and ate with his servants and soldiers. While Matilda and Geoffroy continued to lead a rebellion in the Aquitaine region of south-western France against the royal army - which ironically consisted partially of supporters of Matilda such as Stephen's brother Robert of Gloucester -  Stephen took the opportunity to travel to England, where the people of London chose him as the new king, believing that he would grant them new privileges. On 22 December 1135, he was crowned as king.